Abstract
Mallory, Parker and Nye1 demonstrated pigmentation and cirrhosis of the liver in rabbits following administration of copper salts in their feed. Hall and Butt 2 repeated and extended the work of Mallory. They obtained a similar pigmentation and cirrhosis of the liver in rabbits by feeding copper acetate. In addition they made chemical analyses of the livers and demonstrated the presence of large quantities of copper. Flinn and VonGlahn 3 repeated many of Mallory's experiments and added others of their own. They concluded that copper salts and powdered metallic copper administered in the feed do not cause deposits of pigment in the livers of rabbits, rats and guinea pigs; nor do these substances produce cirrhosis. They maintained that animals fed on an exclusive diet of carrots developed a pigmentation comparable to that produced by Mallory and others. Poison, 4 in Great Britain, obtained results substantiating those of Flinn and VonGlahn.
In view of these conflicting results it has seemed necessary to examine this problem again by a series of well controlled and carefully conducted experiments.
Methods. Healthy rabbits were selected. For each rabbit to be fed on copper, a litter mate of the same sex was selected as a control. Each series when 85 days old was placed on a special diet consisting of a mixture of ground alfalfa and ground barley. When 90 days of age, one series was placed on a diet in which 2 mg. of copper were added to each gram of the special diet. These diets and tap water were allowed ad libitum. Many of the copper fed rabbits died after several weeks due to copper poisoning, while none of the control rabbits died before being sacrificed.
Results. Seventeen out of 21 copper-fed rabbits showed pigmentation of the liver.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.